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Surprise, Newspaper Circulation Declining |
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Thursday, 01 November 2007 |
Next week "Editor & Publisher ", a journal covering the newspaper industry, reports that the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) will report that circulation is declining dramatically for many newspapers. Here in Georgia, the "Atlanta Journal and Constitution" will show a drop of 9 percent the past 6 months. Since 2005 newspaper circulation numbers have been falling a couple of percentage points each year.
With that drop, newspapers throughout the nation have been cutting down on their delivery area to cut costs. Many of those readers now go on-line to read local news from a variety of sources. It is reported that the ABC will begin tracking the on-line readership as part of their reporting in the future.
Normally, a decline in circulation would mean that advertisement rates would drop as well. By including on-line readership numbers, the newspapers hope to retain those rates in the future. Just a couple of years ago it was discovered that several large newspapers were fudging their circulation figures to keep their rates high. The "New York Post" was involved in this type of scandal when they were discovered dumping newspapers fresh off the press at recycling centers. This was done to fool their advertisers, and boost circulation numbers.
Many newspapers do have their own websites and those are increasing in readership. In February of this year, the owner of the "New York Times" said that his newspaper may not exist in printed form in 5 years. They are one of the largest newspapers in the world and it isn't likely they will cease to exist. Printing newspapers is labor intense and by going on-line, newspapers could cut much of their labor costs especially when you could cut distribution costs at the same time. Just this year the "New York Times" finally decided to drop their subscription requirements on-line. Other newspapers are looking at doing the same to increase their on-line readership.
One of the issues that we must wait to see if how the on-line readers are measured. Internet marketing companies like Alexa.com , Compete.com and Quantcast.com provide traffic information that could provide one solution to provide advertisers with accurate methods to compare newspaper readership. Alexa and Compete both use a panel method of estimating traffic but the relative newcomer, Quantcast provides direct measurment of website traffic that uses their services. This is often more accurate than the panel method, and not prone to falsification by the newspapers themselves. Quantcast reports that AJC.com has over 1 million unique readers each month. Compete reports 1.1 million for the same month.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 01 November 2007 )
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